Quote of the day:
"Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone." -- G.B. Stern

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1. Editor's Note: It Takes A Village To Solve IT's Problems

In the last couple of weeks, I've noticed an interesting trend,
one I hope will not only continue, but pick up some momentum.

I'm talking about a growth in collaboration to solve
technology-related problems--all kinds of problems, from
addressing bad behavior to fending off lawsuits to figuring out a
solution that can meet most of the needs of the players involved.

That's because in order for collaborative problem solving to
work, the parties need to be willing to do a number of things.
These include:

Putting "me"--be it the company agenda or personal
goals--second to achieving a solution.

Being willing not only to listen to other points of view but
to consider how those viewpoints--or a version of the same--might
mesh with a version of one's own viewpoint.

Embracing compromise.

Seeking out the competition--be it in sales, standards, or
opinion--and invite them to party.

We have to be willing to do this because none of the problems we
face are easy or likely to break down into black and white. But
most of these problems are urgent.

Among the examples I examine in my note are the way in which the
technology community--from consumers to vendors--joined together
to condemn Sony's software-protection program, and in particular
the success of mass blogging in forcing the company to
agree to withdraw the roundly decried program. There's the small
group of heavyweight vendors who have joined together in an effort that, while
obviously serving their own agendas, might be successful in
heading off the feared patent WMD some foresee in the Linux
community. Finally, there's the recent compromise between the United States
and the rest of the world at the U.N. Summit this week--not a
final solution by any means.

Not everyone is happy with the compromise that was reached. But
most delegates and officials involved in the talks said the new
forum would give nations a stronger say in how the Internet
works, including perhaps spurring the availability of domain
suffixes in Chinese and other languages.

The security advisory gave few details of the vulnerability,
saying that it was a flaw in the RPC component and could result
in a denial-of-service attack that would crash affected
computers. No patch is available.

IBM Acquires Change-Management Firm
Collation, a privately held company, sells software that allows
administrators to figure out the impact of potential changes
before they occur.

Supercomputing Lab Reaches Out To Artists, Others
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is helping
sociologists and other nontraditional users by exploring new ways
to use its ability to compute 41 trillion calculations per
second.

Show Coverage: Going IP, A La Google
Is your IT department ready to roll out flexible services built
on top of an open, IP-based architecture? It better be, say tech
leaders at this week's IP.4.IT show, pointing to Google as the
perfect working model.

Security Defense
InformationWeek's U.S. Information Security 2005 research report
documents the responses of 2,540 U.S. business-technology and
security professionals and explores threat perceptions, security
practices, and investment plans. The report also examines attack
successes and their impact on business-technology operations.http://www.informationweek.com/reports/showReport.jhtml?articleID=170100861

Help Choose The Best Independent Tech Blog Of 2005
The nominations for the second annual Blog-X Awards came fast and
furious. We've winnowed down the list to 10 blogs. Cast your vote
for the top independent tech blog! The winner will be revealed
around Dec. 16 and will receive a $500 Starbucks coffee card.http://www.techweb.com/blogawards/vote.html

The steady stream of customer-data breaches that have plagued
financial-services firms, consumer data clearinghouses, and
universities this year have put IT departments on alert to the
vulnerability of sensitive information. Yet the bulk of reactions
have centered on fortification against hackers and other
unwelcome intruders. According to Tony Kontzer, too many
companies have ignored what is perhaps the greatest threat to
data security: employees.

Hosted applications are changing the way companies think about
software, providing a lower-risk, lower-up-front-cost alternative
to on-premise apps. This paper discusses how sales-force
automation is one of the areas taking off most quickly, as sales
executives demand easy-to-use, flexible solutions that don't
require IT support.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.